My interest in growing things should have started early in life, but it
didn't. I was raised on a small hillside dairy farm in Chelsea, VT where my parents
still live today, although the cows are now gone. This farm has been in our family
since the early 1800s, and I was the fifth generation to grow up in the original
farmhouse. You could say that I didn't really take to the farming life, and was out
the door by age 18.

I rambled around a bit during my first year or two of college, winding up
in the Environmental Studies department at the University of Vermont. Here I could
see the roots of what I wanted to do, but the action and philosophy left me with much to
be desired. I still don't know how I wound up in the Plant and Soil Science major,
but I did. Here I had a hands-on program to apply my love of the outdoors and my wish to
do something productive with it. It took another year (1995 now) before I came
across a flyer looking for part-time help with the UVM Apple Team. I really didn't
know squat about apples aside from having picked them in our ancient farm orchard as a kid
and having them squeezed at the cider mill down the road.

Well, I guess I was hooked, and have loved and lived appling ever since. I
worked for the Apple Team for two years, much of it full-time, while I finished my B.S. I
then worked as a field supervisor for Tougas
Family Farm in Northboro, MA. After a rewarding season with Mo and his
family, I returned to Vermont to manage a small retail orchard in
Charlotte, VT where I ran the full operation from soil to apple (or pear,
peach, or plum). Since the orchard closed in 1999 I have
worked for the Vermont Apple Industry as a research and outreach specialist.